Working Together to Keep You Secure

от Jeff Williams 02 април 2009 г. в 09:24

Jeff Williams is a principal group program manager for the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC), and he recently worked with the Facebook Security team to protect you from the Koobface virus. We've asked him to share more about his work to help stop the spread of the virus.

At the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC), researchers from around the world are spending time to find, understand, and—when we're at the top of our game—eradicate the threats that interfere with your enjoyment of the Internet. Our team researches malicious software and delivers technology to remove viruses and spyware. Recently, we've been working with Facebook to fend off a virus called Koobface, which has been affecting users of both the Windows operating system and sites like Facebook.

Koobface, which first surfaced in May 2008, spreads by delivering fraudulent messages from people whose computers have been infected. While the Facebook Security team was able to detect the virus quickly and reset people's accounts, some computers remained infected and continued to spread Facebook messages with seemingly harmless subject headers like "Check out this video" or "LOL." Without the most up-to-date anti-virus software, if you clicked on the links within the messages, your Facebook password and account information could be stolen. Then, your account could be used to help the virus spread by sending even more fraudulent messages to your friends.

In working with Facebook, we were able to add detection of Koobface to our Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), which checks computers running Windows software to detect and remove viruses. By adding this threat to the more than 100 threat families already in MSRT, we're helping to protect hundreds of millions of people. Since releasing our newest version of MSRT two weeks ago, we've removed Koobface nearly 200,000 times from over 133,677 computers in more than 140 different locales around the world.

Our work doesn't stop here. Koobface is constantly changing to avoid detection, or as we call it "highly polymorphic," with over 20,000 variations to date. Sometimes we remove the virus from the same computer more than once. We're also working to detect new variants of the Koobface virus as they're discovered, so we can provide ongoing protection from this threat.

If you have Windows installed on your computer and are already using Automatic Updates, you should be receiving the MSRT each month as part of our standard security update. If you think your computer may be infected with Koobface, you can use our free online virus scanner here. You may also want to protect yourself further with one of our anti-virus products or one from a company you trust.

You can read more on Koobface and other threats on the MMPC blog. More useful tips and information are also available on Facebook's Security Page.

Jeff is always ready to battle malicious software with companies like Facebook.